


Spread your wings

by vague_flirting



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 30 Day Fandom Challenge, Asexual Character, M/M, Tattooed Q, Tattoos, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vague_flirting/pseuds/vague_flirting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the 30 Day Fandom Challenge, Day 1--"Tattoos".</p><p>James is fascinated by Q's tattoo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spread your wings

**Author's Note:**

> For the 30 Day Fandom Challenge, [here.](http://vague-flirting.tumblr.com/post/75424472855/30-prompts-to-be-completed-over-thirty-days-any)
> 
> Thanks to Anna for making sure I actually completed this <3
> 
> (Shh, it's still before midnight in California.)

Bond never asked about the artful black ink etched on his lover’s back.  He knew that tattoos could be deeply personal things, and he got the feeling that Q’s sole tattoo fell into that category.

He’d first seen it after the Skyfall incident, when Q had offered to let James stay in his flat, since James didn’t have his own anymore and finding a secure flat was a bitch.  James had been lurking in the Quartermaster’s flat while on his mandatory leave, and Q was out at MI6 on a ridiculously long shift.  Q finally came home, taking several attempts to get past his own security measures.  The smaller man shuffled in, zombie-like, after what must’ve been at least thirty-six hours on the job.

“Are your shifts always that long?” James inquired, vaguely alarmed and worried for Q’s health.

Q mumbled something in his exhausted stupor.  The only words James caught were “002”, “prick”, and “idiots”.  The Quartermaster slowly made his way over to the table in the corner of the living room, grabbing his water bottle and gulping down half of it.

“How long till you have to go back?” James asked.

He almost didn’t catch Q’s muttered out response of, “Twenty-four hours.”

James nodded, and watched as Q set his water bottle back down and began heading towards his bedroom.  Q began pulling off his cardigan, then shucked off his shoes, and pulling off his tie.  James looked on, surprised.  He’d assumed Q was the body shy type.  The younger man was almost at his bedroom door when he had finished unbuttoning and pulling off his shirt.  Revealed on the pale skin of his back was a tattoo of two small wings, one on each shoulder blade.

“You have a tattoo,” James pointed out.

Q stiffened minutely, and seemingly woke up a bit.  “Yes,” he said snappishly.  “Now, please remain quiet so I can get some much-needed sleep.”

James never mentioned Q’s tattoo after that.

The second time James saw Q’s tattoo, it was after they’d entered a relationship.  James had been putting off finding himself his own flat, and Q eventually just sighed and told James his favorite restaurant and when he was available to go out.  They fell into each other, and were quite content to stay that way.

James got a closer look at Q’s tattoo on the first night that Q invited James to sleep with him, instead of in the guest bedroom.  (Of course, “sleeping with him” did not have the meaning one would expect of James Bond’s partners, as Q had made it clear from the beginning that he was not interested in sex with anyone, which James was fine with.)  They’d slept pressed together intimately, and James woke with the sun as Q still slumbered on.  The weak sunlight made Q look younger than he was.  James took a long time to just memorize the entirety of his body, gaze catching on Q’s tattoo.

It was more complex and artful up close than he’d noticed from his brief sighting of it previously.  The small feathered wings depicted in black ink were flawed; some of the feathers bent, twisted, or ruffled.  A single feather fell from one wing, frozen in perpetual motion on Q’s skin.  Just below the small of his back, there was a small pile of fallen feathers.  Q’s ink wings were not perfect, like an angel’s, but despite the disarray, it seemed that they were still intact.

The Quartermaster awoke to the feeling of gentle, hesitant fingertips tracing out familiar patterns on his shoulder blades, patterns that he’d memorized years ago in the mirror.  He hummed, rolling over so that he might be able to press a slow, languid kiss to James’ mouth.

From that day forward, James gained a particular fascination with Q’s elaborate tattoo.  Q never explained what it meant, and James never asked.  Every chance he got, James traced the detailed and careful lines of the ink until Q batted him away.  James would even put his hand over where he knew the tattoo was when Q was clothed.  The wings were a mysterious, novel part of James’ Quartermaster, and even after he could perfectly recall the pattern behind his eyelids, he continued to memorize them every chance he got.

Finally, after about six months of being together, Q told him what his tattoo symbolized.  It was a quiet morning when they both were on leave and had decided to spend the day in bed.  Q was on his phone, reviewing some code for a personal project of his, and James was running his fingers up and down Q’s bare spine.  After a few minutes, Q put his phone down and hummed happily.  He pushed against James’ touch like a cat encouraging a human to pet it more.

“I got my tattoo when I was twenty-two,” Q said, breaking the peaceful silence.  “My sister was the one that gave it to me.”

James had met Q’s twin sister a month prior.  Q went out to lunch with her as much as he could.  Bailey, Q’s twin, was a lovely woman who worked as a tattoo artist in central London.  James had guessed that Bailey was the artist behind Q’s ink, and was not surprised to be proven right.

“I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo, and Bailey insisted on doing it.  She chose what I was going to get, and told me none of it.  I was wary, but I trusted her to give me something beautiful and meaningful.”

Q paused for a moment, and James wrapped his arms around him and squeezed gently, remaining silent.

“When she showed me what she’d done, I loved it instantly.  And when she told me the meaning behind it, I cried.  We’d been through a lot together.  Our mother died when we were young, and our father turned to alcohol.  He turned abusive, and I took it upon myself to protect her.  After we got away from him, we were lost and unsure in a cruel world.  We went down some wrong paths, made some wrong choices, and did some things we regret, but by my twenty-second birthday, I’d straightened myself out and forced her to do the same.

“She said she gave me this tattoo because all our lives, I was her angel.  A little beaten, a little scuffed, but an angel nonetheless.  It was the most meaningful thing she’d ever said to me, especially because we’d been fighting before.  We made up, and we went back to being as close as we were as kids.”

Q twisted around, laying his head against James’ chest.  For a long time, James merely absorbed and didn’t say anything.

“Your sister missed something,” James said, rousing Q from the light sleep he’d fallen into.

“What’s that?” Q asked sleepily.

“Since she gave you wings, you’ve been able to _soar_ ,” James answered.  Q had come a long way from making bad choices in his youth.  He was saving lives now, hell, he saved James’ on a weekly basis.  And he was a vital part of the nation’s security, now.

Q looked up at James, radiating happiness and love.  His fingers intertwined with James’, smile saying more than words ever could.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr! http://vague-flirting.tumblr.com/


End file.
